What is Settings|Cellular|System Services|Media Services?

[BrettDS]

OK, so last night when I went to bed I had more than 3G of data remaining in my Family Share 10G plan. I know this because at shortly before I went to bed I got an alert from ATT that we had reached 6657M or about 66% of our plan. We have 4 days left in our billing cycle, so it's pretty normal for us to have used 66% of our data by this point in the month.

However, at 2AM I got an alert that we had used 9227M, then at 2:30 we had used 10254M, by 2:47 it was up to 11017M and at 3AM it hit 11265M. It seemed to stop going up after that.

So this morning when I woke up and saw the alerts and I checked our usage I discovered that phone (running iOS 8) had used more than 6G of our 10G plan. (Normally my usage would be about 2G by this time of the month).

I went to Settings|Cellular to see if I could tell what was using all the data. I'm not sure when it was last reset, but the current total was showing only 7.1G, so it couldn't have been too long ago.

In any case, as I investigated, the only thing showing a huge amount of data was Media Services under System Services, which had used 5.1G of data, but I have no idea what "Media Services" is, or why it would use a crazy amount of cellular data during the middle of the night while the phone was connected to wifi (I was at home and it was connected to my home wifi network).

Do you guys have any ideas?

Thanks,
Brett

 

[WB2Colorado]

I don't know for sure, since I'm not running the beta, but I'm guessing Media Services is iTunes Match or the iTunes Store/App Store maybe? Do you have automatic downloads turned on for purchases/app updates?

 

[BrettDS]

I don't know for sure, since I'm not running the beta, but I'm guessing Media Services is iTunes Match or the iTunes Store/App Store maybe? Do you have automatic downloads turned on for purchases/app updates?

I have automatic app updates turned on (although I don't believe that will run over a cellular connection). I don't have automatic downloads turned on for purchases of any type. I do have iTunes Match, but I didn't ask it to download anything from iTunes match, nor had anything been downloaded.

It's really odd... 4G is a lot of data to just start downloading randomly, but it hasn't happened again since then.

 

[hypervish89]

My data usage on iOS8 has been through the roof as well. I've since disabled cellular data.

 

[jlsm511]

I have automatic app updates turned on (although I don't believe that will run over a cellular connection). I don't have automatic downloads turned on for purchases of any type. I do have iTunes Match, but I didn't ask it to download anything from iTunes match, nor had anything been downloaded.

It's really odd... 4G is a lot of data to just start downloading randomly, but it hasn't happened again since then.

Automatic App updates shouldn't work unless you have the "Use Cellular Data" option under iTunes & App Store turned on.

 

[BrettDS]

My data usage on iOS8 has been through the roof as well. I've since disabled cellular data.

The odd thing is that I haven't had any unusual data usage since that one night. Before that everything seemed normal and since then I haven't had any unusual data usage since then either.

 

[CharlieBrown-DE]

I see a lot of posts around this issue where System Services eat up giant amounts of cellular data.
For me it is "iTunes Accounts", for other people it is "Media Services" or "Location Services"...

This is a issue that should be handled in the media, not "Bendgate"!!